The AFL (the Australian Football League) has a big stake in the bid to host the soccer world cup in Australia in either 2018 or 2022, and it can influence the outcome, so how should the AFL play its hand in this game?
I think the best result for the AFL is for the bid to simply fail. Australian rules football and soccer are competitors for players, fans, sponsorship and government support. This is not a win-win situation. If Australia hosts the world cup then some kids who would have played football will instead play soccer; some viewers will switch from watching football to watching soccer; some sponsors will switch; a whole season of football will be disrupted; and the building of rectangular stadiums will not help the AFL one iota. It is silly to say that a winning world cup bid would help all codes — if the world cup comes to Australia it will diminish the status of Australian rules football. Soccer is like an introduced species — beautiful in its own environment but a threat to the indigenous species of football in Australia.
Hosting the world cup would be good for the rugby codes. Aussie rules and soccer are competing for the same types of athletes — those with high skill who can run all day. But elite rugby players are out of a different mould. The dominant requirements in rugby are explosive power and physical toughness. Aussie rules is tough contact sport, but rugby is a collision sport played with frightful brutality at the highest level. If soccer becomes more popular in Australia then the pool of players available to play rugby will not be diminished. Moreover, the building of new rectangular football stadiums will help rugby tremendously. For instance, there is no quality rectangular stadium in Perth despite it being the home of a Super 14 team. A world class stadium would surely be built in Perth if the soccer world cup came to Australia.
So, it is obvious that the rugby codes should support the soccer world cup bid, but what about the AFL? The AFL has the power of veto over the Football Federation of Australia (FFA) bid. It can refuse to allow the MCG or the Docklands stadiums to be used. The AFL has watertight leases over those stadiums which go out beyond 2022. But such intransigence would damage its political support, so the AFL has already offered up the MCG. However, the AFL doesn’t have to refuse anything. All the AFL needs to do is to do to sink the bid is to have a big public argument with the FFA. The bid needs everyone in Australia behind it to have any chance of success. If the AFL doesn’t positively support the world cup bid then it won’t succeed.
The best strategy for the AFL is to offer wholehearted support for the bid in exchange for government funded building program for oval stadiums. Aussie and cricket are played on ovals. Soccer and rugby are played on rectangles. The AFL should team up with Cricket Australia to insist on funding of the building and improvement of oval facilities. The price of wholehearted AFL and CA support for the soccer world cup bid should be a Government commitment to a building program that goes ahead if the soccer world cup bid is successful.
[...] Read this article: AFL and the soccer world cup : Core Economics [...]
Sporting protectionism at it’s finest.
If AFL is this terrified of soccer, it’s fan and player base so disloyal they could defect en masse because of a world cup and competition so fragile that a partially disrupted season some eight to twelve years hence can only be mitigated by huge govt investment in oval grounds it doesn’t deserve any assistance at all.
” Soccer is like an introduced species — beautiful in its own environment but a threat to the indigenous species of football in Australia.”
Uh. Association football in Australia is as old as that other ‘introduced species’ Rugby.
If the AFL are locked out of their grounds for 2+ months and forced to play on smaller suburban or country ovals, the consequences for AFL would be severe.
A club such as West Coast, for example, has 40,000 members. If Subiaco was siphoned off to the soccer world cup, and West Coast were forced to play home games at the WACA, they would have to cap their membership at 20,000. At $300 per membership, that is $6 million gone. It would be naive to assume that everyone who was turned away for membership would automatically return the following year – even if 2/3 of the disenfranchised members were to return, the effect would be a further $4m hit over the next 2 years. And with corporate facilities far inferior at the WACA compared to Subiaco, the total hit to the club would be in the region of $15m-$20m.
West Coast may survive such a financial hit, although they would be severely weakened. But many clubs would not – and with less clubs, TV revenue and sponsorship for the league is devalued.
So when soccer people say “It’s only a month of one season”, it’s far worse than that. The soccer world cup would be over in a month; but the trail of sporting debt and devastation left behind would be a permanent legacy.
/me can hear the desolate, windswept keening of generations of future AFL fans, their sport destroyed by capricious soccer…
Wait… wasn’t the whole point that places like Subiaco wouldn’t be used and instead the World Cup was so unfair because there’d be a decent rectangular stadium in Perth?
Isn’t the potential devastation, desolation and gnashing of teeth over the MCG and Docklands being denied for eight weeks?
Effectively two stadiums being denied the AFL for May and June 2022 is worth the AFL sabotaging Australia’s bid for the world’s largest sporting event unless millions are splurged on oval grounds – really?
Leinad: Sam’s merely highlighting the strategic implications of AFL involvement from the AFLs point of view, and the best case scenario for the AFL according to Sam is that the World Cup bid fails. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable assessment.
Obviously, if you’re a big fan of soccer/football and think the World Cup coming to Australia would be great, this isn’t something you want to hear, but that doesn’t change the strategic landscape.
It’s far less a threat to the AFL than it is to Andrew Demetrio. The competition for scarce player/fan resources will be felt most keenly in the areas into which the AFL is currently trying to expand rather than it’s existing base. There’s enough discomfort from the core about Demetrio’s quixotic crusades already, and this will just magnify the bill being paid for by the Melbourne clubs whilst minimising any apparent gains.
Do we have any reason to believe the “threat” to the AFL (i.e. to Aussie Rules and its popularity with fans in at least 3 states) from any locally-hosted scocer World Cup would be any greater than that experienced by the US’s NFL from the 1994 World Cup?
That sport seems to have retained its popularity despite the world game traipsing all over the countryside for a couple of months 16 years ago…
What is this soccer australia you talk about?
if i may be so bold as to suggest the writer do some research next time. Soccer is currently run, in this country, by the F.F.A or Football Federation of Australia.
In regard to the article content – Yet again AFL (and their supporters) being reactive instead of proactive.
The defensiveness and sniping from soccer (or anti-AFL) supporters takes the discussion nowhere. I think ‘David’ summed up the gist of the article eloquently.
The question for FFA (or FIFA) is how do they address their interests versus current AFL contracts and arrangements. All the ‘football’ codes are in competition for the public’s limited dollar. Or is Australia’s sporting dollar even worth FIFA’s effort?
Its mind blowing the degree of blind parochialism that allows some of these anti-AFL pro-soccer types to think that the AFL doesn’t deserve considerable compensation for shutting their competition down for two months.
Anything short of selfless benevolence by the AFL towards a competing code is to be seen as “reactionary”.
And “huge public investments” in oval grounds is some kind of laughing absurdity but “huge public investments” in rectangular stadiums is perfectly reasonable for a one month tournament in a sport that, at the national club level, barely averages over 10,000
How is an indigenous sport that has always paid its own accused of “protectionism” for asserting its rights in the face of a massively public funded push for a one month tournament? Where the hell is the analogy?
Here’s a solution, why not request to have the competition in February?
(here fishy, fishy, fishy…)
I’d be more than happy to see the world cup bypass melbourne completely!! We’ll keep our stadiums and games, and take no part in this round ball nonsense! There’s plenty of stadiums in Brisbane, Sydney and Perth!
The issue really is why the hell would the World Cup be played here? We’re a day’s flight from anywhere, the time zones are poison in Europe, and as far as FIFA’s concerned, we’re not even at the table.
WE the taxpayers are forking out $45million (so far), for the usual bunch of “prominent Australians” to travel round the world on a doomed mission.
Nice idea Reflector. Better check with the rest of Melbourne first, as I think the majority would want the WC.
And Juzzy, travel time (true, but in some cases only a few hours more), timezones (true, but we are perfectly situated for Asia, which has a bigger population then Europe and Africa combined, and hence a bigger cash incentive!!!) and your last comment, about not being at the table….we were never a chance for 2018, but we are a definite shot for 2022.
And Bemused….nice try. Looks like that one got away!
Parochialism?
From the defenders of an article that claims soccer is a hostile foreign invader that threatens our indigenous game?
Projection… it ain’t just a river in Egypt.
Leinad,
Are you capable of engaging on content or are you just confined to parochial rhetoric?
A whole article with solid case and you obsess over the one bit of colourful analogy, presumably because you have no arguments against the broader case.
If you think stopping the season for two months to relinquish stadiums that have an iron clad contract is of no consequence, then presumably we can just submit our bid to be played in February and FIFA and the European leagues will be much obliged, such a small inconvenience it is and all.
The AFL should take a hard line, as the bleating and squealing ant-AFL brigade will bleat and squeal irregardless!!!
“Are you capable of engaging on content or are you just confined to parochial rhetoric?”
I did, and then people accused me of being ‘parochial’ and part of the ‘anti-AFL brigade’, whatever that is. Seems a bit rich to do that and then complain about rhetoric. Oh well. One more time:
If anything, Sam Wylie sells AFL short – how can an established, national football code that’s set to sign a billion dollar TV rights deal, that’s expanding as we speak into the two largest demographic areas in the country be so vulnerable that another code’s hosting it’s international competiton on Aussie soil spell such disaster?
“A whole article with solid case and you obsess over the one bit of colourful analogy, presumably because you have no arguments against the broader case.”
In this case “colourful analogy” is presumably not “rhetoric” – I imagine the verb conjugates:
- I engage in colourful analogy
- You tend to exaggerate
- She indulges in interperate rhetoric
“If you think stopping the season for two months to relinquish stadiums that have an iron clad contract is of no consequence, then presumably we can just submit our bid to be played in February and FIFA and the European leagues will be much obliged, such a small inconvenience it is and all.”
Yeah, closing two stadia to AFL is totally comparable in terms of disruption to holding the WC in the middle of the international soccer season. My that’s a crunchy orange you’ve got there. Who’s the parochial one here?
“The AFL should take a hard line, as the bleating and squealing ant-AFL brigade will bleat and squeal irregardless!!!’
Ah. Right. Not me then.
I can’t help but feel a discussion involving game theory would be most pertinent here.
Given the revenues at risk – in the worst case of a significant loss of the AFL season (the 4 months in contention) – the best response for the AFL is to stand their ground on contractual arrangements and let FFA/FIFA make a suitable offer or walkaway from the proverbial bad deal.
FIFA will make revenues no matter where they play the WC; the AFL stands to lose revenues during a WC played in Oz.
Reviewing what has been written of openly in various news forums, it appears that the FFA hasn’t offcially answered any of the questions that the AFL submitted regarding the proposed WC bid. The biggest point seems to be what preparations will be needed at the MCG to bring it into line for the WC. Unless either FFA or the FIFA make clear their requirements then the AFL is entitled to their position.
@David: or maybe tournament theory?
Dave,
Is that where two men enter the cage and one man leaves?
Soccer fans can’t seem to grasp that others don’t have have the appreciation for soccer they have, that don’t give a damn if soccer is the most popular code of football in Europe.
In that context what is so unreasonable about not wanting the sport you’ve spent your whole life following, disrupted for months simply to fulfil the ambitions of a relatively small number of people. What is so unreasonable about being angry at the prospect of having to pay via taxes to promote a sport that would like nothing more than to see the destruction of the AFL?
Finally, there’s no paranioa required to form this view. Soccer commentators are openly hostile to the AFL and are quite overt in their wish to eliminate the sport. Just listen to people like Craig Foster or read some of the anti AFL garbage on sports forums.
I regularly post on know your soccer.info and i like your article it’s generated a quality discussion for australian sport. But isn’t only like 2 games that will/ might be played on AFL grounds. So what those clubs will be forced to play on another field. I’m positive the AFL committee can create a special roster for that month so teams that might have actually played on those fields will be played on away fields. the revenue that the soccer world cup will create for Australia is enormous and far reaching. It’s like this, if the AFL lend their support I’m positive they will receive support if it’s only money that they care about. From my understanding the AFl clubs are pretty wealthy when compared to NRl/ soccer clubs